


If You See Light

by saisei



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Episode: s05e06 Required Reading, M/M, Non-Consensual, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 01:04:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4587126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saisei/pseuds/saisei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The first time it happens, Stiles is sixteen but he looks a lot younger.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You See Light

**Author's Note:**

> See end notes for specific warnings.

The first time it happens, Stiles is sixteen but he looks a lot younger – like a smooth-faced junior high school kid, with his kitchen-table buzzcut and smart mouth. Derek slams him up against a wall and pins him there as he kisses the fuck out of him. When he steps back and lets go, swiping the back of his hand across his wet mouth, Stiles falls the couple of inches he'd been held off the ground. As he straightens from his graceless stumble, his eyes are narrowed and he's coiled with tension, like he knows he's too slow to flee and too weak to fight. As usual.

"I'm not gay, man," he says, stating it like a plain fact, not defensive or rude. The slight tilt to his head looks almost apologetic, his body language deliberately open, his stance saying: _we both know my life's in your hands._

Derek sucks in a breath and feels like if his control slips even an inch, he's going to shake apart. He tells himself it's anger, and he puts solid threat into the way he stares Stiles down. He says, "Don't tell anyone."

"I never thought about it before," Stiles says, circling slow and cautious away from the wall, keeping himself equidistant from Derek, who turns to keep his eyes on him, "but maybe the werewolf thing is really good practice for staying in the closet?"

"You try being hunted," Derek snaps through sudden fangs, and sees all the implications of that flicker across Stiles' face. Ha. It makes him smile, which makes Stiles flinch. "We need you _there_ tonight," he repeats from their earlier explosive argument, and Stiles sags.

"Okay," he says. "Yeah. I guess, I can – " He sighs, and capitulation makes him look tired, which thankfully makes him seem less young. "Yeah. No problem."

"Good," Derek snaps, and he can't help that the word sounds like a threat.

After that, there's a second time, and a third, and then Derek loses count. The kisses aren't ever anything they talk about; they're a release valve. A useful technique. Stiles forces Derek over his limits, Derek shoves back hard, and Stiles gives in, over and over. Derek likes the high of power when Stiles stops struggling. It's like regaining control, if even for a moment. The crash after is always bad, the inevitable tide of fear, shame, and disgust sweeping back in, leaving him to avoid Stiles' eyes the next time they meet. He can't say he's sorry, not when he knows he'll do it again the next time he reaches his breaking point.

Stiles doesn't _stop_ him. He bitches – well, that's natural. Gets wary, yeah. But won't _stop_ him.

Derek picked up tricks on the run with Laura; the only wolves who dared to shelter them took pride in turning his mother's saying on its head, both predators and killers. They'd have ripped him apart in a heartbeat if he screwed up, but he learned quick how to act like that was no big deal. He stole cars, broke into houses and out of handcuffs. They taught him how to run a campaign of intimidation; how to beat humans in a fight; how to use charm and menace; how to lie, even to an alpha. He was shot, stabbed, left for dead, and beaten down by trainers who cracked his bones and ripped his insides out. He told himself it was good, that he needed to get stronger. Wolves were supposed to be dangerous, anyway.

So he knows how to get right up into Stiles' space and make him uncomfortable; he keeps him off-balance and uneasily turned on, and then he lets things _escalate_. When no one's around he smacks Stiles on the ass and rubs his hair, lets Stiles stew in embarrassment when he gets hard and then tells him any werewolf could smell it on him. Says it's natural for a teenaged boy; stares in unblinking scorn when Stiles swallows hard and mutters, "So we're cool?" He presses Stiles up against a wall and palms his dick through his jeans while he uses his mouth to muffle the sounds he makes. Stiles comes almost instantly, shocked and shaking and ashamed, and when Derek tells him to scram he goes quietly.

Knowing how to make Stiles quiet is _power_.

He spends _years_ keeping Stiles quiet about this secret between them. Helplessness burns into fear into rage into an anchor that pulls Derek under the surface, so he has to claw his way back up. He's more than willing to claw right over Stiles if he has to, to fill his lungs with a taste of freedom before getting sucked under again. Stiles lets him: lets him pin him to his bed and blow him, lets him jerk him off in the woods, lets him lick Stiles' come off his fingers one by one.

Derek never asks for anything, not once. Stiles still insists he's probably mostly not gay. But it only takes a few months before Stiles starts reciprocating.

"You like it," Derek says once, after a fast dirty handjob in the school's east stairwell.

"Right," Stiles answers in resignation, and not the next time (but the next next time) when Derek goes to his knees and takes Stiles' dick in his mouth, the fingers that twist tight in his hair are almost as good as either of them wanting this.

Derek's got a type when it comes to girlfriends: strong, confident, deadly women, who work with him easily as equals and like to dominate in bed. He always gets visions of cooking dinner together in a comfortable kitchen, laughing and drinking wine. Like his parents, which he supposes is trite but inevitable. His body knows by instinct how to hold and kiss and make love, he should be able to fake it til he makes it, but he keeps getting betrayed or left behind. He's never good enough or lovable enough. Every relationship ends in failure, and maybe he never graduated but he knows well enough who the least common denominator in the equation is.

Except... the thing with Stiles inexplicably goes on for years, even though Derek's never thought about sex with guys until he had Stiles pressed up against him. Maybe it lasts because Derek keeps telling himself that they don't trust each other, that they don't even like each other, that they'll never be friends. He writes Stiles off at every single turn, and Stiles keeps coming through for him.

It's infuriating. Thank God he finds Cora and she takes pity on him, takes him away to her pack, who _aren't gang members, what were you and Laura thinking when you ran to them, you used to be my normal brother_. Cora makes him appointments with her therapist and her alpha. Derek tells people to call him Miguel, just to be a dick, and Cora looks like she could cry, but she just smacks him in the arm and tells him to stop looking like a serial killer.

Derek wants to go the rest of his life without ever killing again, but he doubts he has that option. Stiles keeps sending texts to Cora, and then to Derek's new phone, which Cora gets for him because she doesn't want to deal with Stiles any more. Derek only ever replies in Spanish, and he grins for days when he realizes that he can drive Stiles crazy by making him wait for ages and then sending on a dismissive _q sea_ or _d=_.

Cora teases him about flirting with Stiles one day, and Derek barely makes it to the bathroom before he throws up. He can't stop shaking afterward, can't pull on a human form, can't bear having Cora in the same room, can't find anything to anchor himself to. He nearly claws himself to pieces before Cora can bring help, and it's three days before he snaps back into awareness. Cora's sitting at his bedside, but he can smell the mountain ash keeping her safe from him. He says he's sorry for everything – for leaving, for changing, for not dying like he should have.

"You're an idiot," Cora tells him, sounding lost. "And my brother, and I love you."

A day after that, when his claws have finally retracted and the circle of ash is broken, she tells him that Peter selflessly volunteered to collect and take care of his favorite nephew in his time of need. Derek burns with shame at not being worthy of staying with his sister; someone who deserves Peter. He packs up every scrap of leaking emotion, forcing the urge to howl down into the dark where it belongs, and they travel north.

Seeing Stiles again doesn't set Derek on edge the way he's used to. He's a bit more centered, settled in his own skin. He lets Stiles treat him like Scott, with faux-casual slaps to the shoulder and high fives, the occasional kick under the table and – once – a weary one-armed hug that got blood all over one of Stiles' ratty t-shirts. He tells himself Stiles is just a kid, like Cora, and now that he's seen a real pack again he remembers how safe it's meant to be: with the elders and the betas – parents and uncles and aunts – the whole _community_ taking responsibility for raising the children right.

He doesn't talk about the kissing or the sex with Stiles. How would he explain? Whatever damage he did is done, and Stiles seems to have found some way of living with it. Especially when the nogitsune barely gives him a second glance and a few broken bones before sidelining him, like Derek's not worth the effort. It makes sense, he supposes; Derek had been sixteen himself once, and he survived just fine.

After Kate comes back from the dead and Derek comes back from being a teenager misled by his dick again, he wonders if maybe the nogitsune cursed him somehow. For the longest time he's not sure he's awake. He loses time, blinking back to awareness to find himself on the roof or in the woods. He becomes human and joins Scott's pack in that order, which makes no sense, except he's given up fighting.

He gives everything up.

When the dust settles, he runs back to Cora. As a wolf, not talking about what happened is easier.

He doesn't have contact with anyone from Beacon Hills for five years. He knows Chris Argent got a message to Cora when he killed Kate, asking for assistance to make sure she stayed dead. He knows Cora's pack helped, but he hid in the woods until enough of his humanity returned for him to feel ashamed of being a coward.

Cora pushes and nags him. She reminds him of the parts of Peter that Derek still loves. Derek was the spoiled baby of his family for almost five years before he found himself a resentful middle child; he likes getting attention, even the kind that feels bad. But he knows it's not fair to treat Cora like she's the older. He hates feeling like he got stuck in time, like he petrified when Laura died, or when his family died, or when the hot new substitute teacher pushed him up against the classroom door after school and unzipped his pants, laughing when she made him come, saying, " _How_ old are you, handsome?" and "Our secret, okay?" and "We should do this again."

His control was crap back then; she must have caught a flash of his blue eyes and learned he'd already killed. Her heart never betrayed her. She was never scared, not once.

Stiles had been scared as long as Derek knew him. Fear was his strength. He'd never been unaware of how easily Derek could have snapped his bones or shredded him. But he faced his fear, acknowledged it, and then went on living.

Derek wants to learn how to do that. And the first step, he thinks, has to be apology.

Cora doesn't know why he wants to go back; his therapist says that she thinks he's ready.

He doesn't contact anyone until he's checked into his room at the Motel 6 just over the Beacon County line. When he calls, he's not surprised that Scott already knows he's there. Scott's a good alpha; he protects his territory and his pack. Fortunately, he doesn't know why he shouldn't give Derek Stiles' contact information. To him, they're just old friends who should totally meet up for coffee and hang out, just like old times, and the whole pack can get together Friday – no, wait, maybe Saturday? – and have a barbecue or something. Derek lets Scott burble on making plans, but he thinks he'll probably be leaving town for good well before then.

He sends Stiles a text because he thinks he'd fuck up talking to him. Stiles replies a couple hours later, says sure and includes a map link to a parking area in the southwest Preserve. _Good trail, scenic viewpoint with picnic tables, you bring lunch I'll bring coffee._

 _tvo,_ Derek sends back, and superstitiously turns his phone off.

He doesn't really know what to do with himself until morning, but he falls asleep stupidly early, watching TV. He wakes with the dawn, goes for a run, and comes back starving. The place he stops at to eat and buy food is new, but it's just across the road from the ugly-familiar Beacon Center with the Walmart at one end and Safeway at the other. The road lined with shops scars the land with asphalt and concrete. When he was a kid, there were trees here, and a creek the bigger kids used to swim in.

His memories connect him to the land here, and the feeling gets stronger the closer he gets. On the edge of Beacon Hills he makes the snap decision to drive around town instead of going straight through. He doesn't want to see any more changes.

His rental car is the only vehicle in the lot when he gets there; not a huge surprise. He gets out and leans against the door with his arms and ankles crossed, head down as he relaxes and listens. He can hear squirrels, insects hollowing out a dead tree, a dog getting walked a couple miles north by the nature center, crows fighting. And finally, the grumble of a jeep engine protesting its way up the last twisting hill.

The jeep's not the same one – the engine sounds healthier, and it's rusty orange, not blue – but that's not a surprise. Neither is the way Stiles parks haphazard and slings himself out, leaving the door open and the music on. But Derek is shocked to be greeted with a wide grin and a crushing hug. He returns the hug, because Cora's training him, and breathes in helplessly. Stiles smells familiar and comfortable; he's taller than Derek. Derek hadn't even realized how much he missed him until now.

"So hey," Stiles says, taking a step back and slapping Derek on the shoulder, still grinning as he looks him up and down. "Been a while."

"I was with Cora," Derek offers.

"Yeah?" Stiles goes back to his car and starts hauling stuff out with intent, which Derek takes as a signal to grab his backpack with the sandwiches and snacks.

The trail's uphill but not more than an hour according to the parking lot map. Stiles fills the time asking normal catching-up questions. How's Cora and what's she up to these days? Where are they living? What's Spanish for werewolf? How long's Derek staying? Why the hell is he at the Motel 6, doesn't it stink of other people and cleaning stuff? What's Derek been up to?

Derek dodges the last question, saying interrogation must run in the Stilinski blood, and Stiles looks back over his shoulder at him with a smirk.

"You know it does."

It comes to him suddenly that he's probably coming off as weird, not asking about Stiles in return. So he asks about his father, and the pack, and university. It feels good to know.

As Stiles speaks, in the back of his head Derek finally starts trying to put words to all the things he's _done_ – to Stiles, to himself, to both of them. He's here to explain himself, after all, but he's always been better doing stuff, not talking.

If he'd been good with words, maybe he'd never have taken his rage and frustration out on Stiles in the first place. He'd wanted to shut Stiles up and shut him down, keep him from arguing (Stiles always won arguments) or fighting (Stiles was breakable). Persuasion was hard; taking was easier. But he's still shocked by the enormity of what he took.

He thinks he was Stiles' first kiss; probably his first blowjob; definitely his first fuck. He wonders who Stiles would have chosen if he'd had the choice, instead of Derek taking choice away from him. Stiles had been afraid of Derek for so long that even now he finds himself straining to hear or smell that fear.

He doesn't want to. He does anyway, like a faint background static. It makes him feel sick; feel like a monster.

"Earth to Derek," Stiles says, lobbing a bottle of water at his face underhand. Derek just barely manages to catch it, and Stiles laughs like he's hilarious. "You jetlagged?"

"It's only four hours different," Derek tells him.

That earns him an eyeroll. "So you're faint from hunger, good to know." Stiles points to the rise just visible. "The picnic area's there. Think you'll survive?"

Derek takes a drink and thinks about it. "Maybe."

Miraculously, they both make the last 5 minutes of the hike without needing to resort to cannibalism, but Derek still gets mocked for having brought five sandwiches for each of them.

"Did I used to eat that much?" Stiles asks, looking inside three sandwiches before settling on roast beef. He's sitting across the table with his long legs stretched out at the side. "Hey – was anyone in Duran Duran a werewolf? Was Hungry Like The Wolf literal?"

Derek can't tell if Stiles is spouting questions because he's nervous or because he's relaxing. _Fuck it_ , he thinks, and just comes out and asks.

Stiles rolls one hand in the air, the universal sign for having a mouthful of food at the moment. Derek waits for him to finish chewing and swallow. He hasn't started on his own sandwiches yet; hasn't even decided what he wants to eat first, or if he's even hungry.

"My dad's pretty much written the definitive guide to the North American Domestic Stiles," Derek is informed. "He says he starts to worry when I'm doing Lady Macbeth things with my fingers." Stiles cocks an eyebrow. "I think I'm just excited to see you, man."

"Even after what I did to you?" Derek doesn't mean to ask like that, not when the day's been good so far. It's not something to talk about while eating.

Stiles digs two travel flasks of coffee out of his bag and sets one in the middle of the table, keeping the other to roll idly between his palms. He says "What did you do?" easily, but he's wary now.

Derek should have written the words down and memorized them. He puts his hands on his legs so Stiles won't see if he needs to use his claws. "When you were in high school. When you were _sixteen_."

Stiles is good with words and puzzles, so it figures he's quick to guess what Derek's on about. His hands still and he looks off to the woods for a moment before sighing. "Heavy." The word breaks into two distinct syllables and then there's an awkward pause.

"I'm sorry," Derek finally says, the words he came to say.

Stiles nods like that's what he expected, and then nods again, and Derek hates the silence because it means he has no idea what Stiles is thinking.

"Why do I get the feeling that you're leaving off the _statutory_ part of what you're trying to apologize for?" he murmurs finally. He sounds so much like the nogitsune that the hair on Derek's arms stands on end.

"Because I made you. You _didn't_ have a choice."

Stiles waggles his hand in the air like a balance. "Sometimes. Maybe. It wasn't the world's healthiest relationship, but we're both pretty fucked-up people." He taps each of his fingers in turn with his thumb. "You were running scared," Stiles goes on slowly, "when I met you. And I was... so stupidly self-centered. Like, it took _weeks_ for the cluebus to arrive and it'd come to me – that time when you were shot and dying? I bet you felt pretty fucking terrified and alone. You didn't have anyone except two stupid kids. It bowled me over, realizing you were scared, too, and barely hanging on." He picks part of the crust off his sandwich and flicks it across the table, hitting Derek in the arm. "You were a dick a lot of the time, but that, that's something I get."

Derek can't help snorting in agreement.

Stiles keeps his chin down but looks up, mouth crooking into a little smirk that Derek can't help feeling makes him look possessed. Again.

"Let me tell you something," Stiles says, conversational, twisting the cap on his coffee loose, then tight, then loose. "Deep down, you and me have one thing in common. We got fucked up as kids, and it cracked the foundations we're trying to build adult lives on."

"Right," Derek mutters, wishing Stiles would stop _looking_ at him. He doesn't buy it, but he figures Stiles wants him to agree. Or at least make a noise to indicate he's listening.

"I have this thing where I want people I'm scared of to love me," Stiles says, leaning forward a little. He doesn't seem aware of what his hands are doing. "Because... I guess I feel it's worth going through," he shakes his head, " _hell_ , literally, because I believe that on the other side I'll be loved. I can take being yelled at, or hit, or left places, or ignored, or god, secondhand smoke like you've never known – my mother, she could chain-smoke for days, and I mean, without sleeping." Finally he looks down, frowning like he's as off-balance as Derek is. "She was sick a lot longer than my dad or the doctors knew. Because I covered for her. So much Febreze, it's a good thing back then I didn't know any werewolves, right? And I was always falling down anyway. What's another bruise?"

Derek has to say something, but he's shocked. "I didn't know that."

" _No one_ knows." Stiles' grin is terrible. "And if you tell, you _will_ die in horrible pain." He flaps a hand to the side like he's sweeping away cobwebs. "The dementia causes loss of empathy, did you know that? She just forgot she cared for me, and I was too little to know there was nothing I could do to change that. I loved her. I tried so hard."

The pieces are slotting into place. "I took advantage of that." He wondered if being a werewolf had allowed him to pick up unconsciously how best to manipulate. "You wanted me to care for you?"

Stiles shrugs. "I wanted to be _something_. Not a werewolf, but not left out. Useful, I guess. And you didn't want a boyfriend but you did want someone to have desperate _oh shit we nearly died_ sex with. And _what the fuck are we going to do_ make-outs. Not to mention the hot kissing that was a lot like panic attacks."

"You were a high school kid. I should never have touched you."

Stiles' eyebrows go up. "I wouldn't have turned down sex with _anyone_ back then. Except Scott." He gave Derek a wry smile. "But like I said, that's a foundation, and I'm building a pretty good life for myself on it. I'm going into counseling – did you know there are only four pack relations specialists in the whole country? And no one, as far as I can tell, works with people bitten outside of traditional packs. Or with mixed packs. Everyone's online these days, there are shapeshifter forums, a few wikis, chat rooms and stuff. I run seminars for kids on internet safety: know who you can trust and talk to, never Instagram your fangs or tails, practice control. Stuff we could have used way back when, you know?"

"There's a centuries-old system," Derek says, half-scandalized and half wishing things had been different when he was growing up. "For passing on knowledge and lore."

"Oh, sure." Stiles finally takes the lid off his coffee and drinks. Derek watches his throat. "Trade secrets, right? But that system only works when it hasn't been disrupted. _You_ never got taught everything you needed to know, much less what you needed to be able to teach. Like being thrown to the wolves in reverse." He takes another sip. "You were freaking adorable when you were sixteen."

Stiles is trying to divert the conversation, but Derek's not having it. "I hurt you, I scared you, I _harmed_ you. _I_ put cracks in your metaphorical foundation. It's great you want to keep kids from getting fucked over. You know how much that sucks, because I did that to you. Literally. More than once." The smell of the sandwiches is making him feel sick, so he starts packing them back in the paper bag. "You're still scared of me."

"So?" Stiles says, like that doesn't matter at all.

"I care for you." Derek feels stupid that the words are so hard to say. Feeling stupid makes him angry, and being angry makes him think about Peter, the fire, and the big, noisy family he'd loved, and how when they were alive, across town the Sheriff's son had been desperately lying to hold his family together. He'd never known, and that makes him feel worse. Feeling bad makes him (predictably) angry at himself for being selfish, for sulking, for not doing the right thing then or now. He _hates_ feelings. "I care for you now," he amends, carefully, stressing the last word, his face feeling all pinched inwards, which means he's scowling. He clears his throat. "Do you think you could stop being scared of me?" Derek asks, because that's important.

He's not sure he can stay in the same space as Stiles if he is. Or if he isn't. He remembers the first time he shoved Stiles up against a wall and jerked him off; the memory of their heartbeats intertwining floods into him, like a stupid song that gets stuck on mental replay and refuses to shut _off_. Stiles had been _terrified_ , and Derek's not sure that he wouldn't have hurt him if Stiles had tried to fight. Grabbing Stiles' dick or throwing him across the room, it was basically the same thing. Except with the latter Stiles would have just hated Derek more, and with the other... his human emotions, his _curiosity_ , had kept Stiles coming back to take what Derek dished out. More or less willingly.

Derek had threatened that he'd rip Stiles' throat out, break his arms or spine, scar his face. He'd run his claws over Stiles' eyelids, scratched red circles over his heart, cupped his balls in his palm and squeezed. And after, he ordered him not to tell anyone, saying _no one will believe you_ and _I know where you live_. He'd never threatened Stiles' father. That was the only line he hadn't crossed. Not a thing to be proud of.

After a long silent minute, Stiles shrugs. "I could try sometime. For the novelty if nothing else." His head comes up fast, meeting Derek's eyes so swiftly that he startles. "I used you, too, you know. I _needed_ you to be the predictable antagonist – like a vaccination. Everything was so huge and awful and uncontrollable, and you were the ridiculous cliché bad boy, Charlie Sheen from Ferris Bueller. If I was a little scared of you instead, I didn't end up gibbering in the corner like a Lovecraft character." Eerily, he adds, "And I always knew you weren't going to rip my throat out with your teeth. Big sad excuse for a wolf."

Derek doesn't snarl, but he smiles just enough to show Stiles his fangs.

"Do you think we can be friends?" Stiles asks abruptly.

Derek closes his eyes for a second. He could get his hand around Stiles' throat easily, slam him face-first into the tabletop, shred through his clothes. Stiles would fight, but he isn't strong enough to prevent Derek from doing anything. He never will be, and they both know that.

Derek will not hurt him ever again.

He'd been grateful for the chance to say he was sorry; had ruthlessly suppressed any hope for forgiveness; but _this_...

He makes himself meet Stiles' eyes and says, "Up to you." His voice is rough around the lump in his throat. "Anything you want. And nothing you don't."

"Okay," Stiles says, and grins. He stretches one hand out, palm up. Derek's fingers are clumsy when he clasps it, but Stiles' grip is warm and familiar, like a promise: Derek's life is in his hands, and it feels like coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> Characters disagree on whether a past relationship was dubcon or noncon; however, Stiles was 16 and there was violence and coercion. Refers to Kate Argent and Derek. Spoilers for ep. 506 relationship between Claudia Stilinski and Stiles.


End file.
